To say we can change or part ways
by Second Star On The Left
Summary: Steve Rogers is born on the fourth day of July, nineteen-eighteen, with eight Marks where most people have two. He sees all of them for the first time in two-thousand and twelve, and learns that he's one away from a Guinness World Record. (Soulbond AU)
1. The Fat Lady fancies havin' a sing

Darcy's pretty proud of the packet she's put together for Steve - she used JARVIS and the threat of Pepper's wrath to get all the information that she couldn't wheedle out of Maria, who was surprisingly forthcoming, so there's literally a metric fuckton of information for him to go through.

Maria had given her a pretty intense eyebrow look when she'd asked for everything that could be found on cult deprogrammers who could be trusted with Captain America's almost-wristwatch partner, but then she'd smiled the tiniest bit and accepted the fancy coffee Darcy had run all the way out to the cute little coffee shop on the corner to get, instead of being both lazy and cheap and going for Starbucks-

_Focus, Lewis, _she reminds herself, adjusting the thick strap of her watch before knocking on Steve's door. She's never been in his apartment - she basically lives in Tony and Pepper's, much to her annoyance, and Thor and Jane pretty much just keep the couch made up as a bed for her, because she never seems to get quite as far as her own little box room (she says box room, it's actually _huge _compared to any apartment she's lived in since moving out of Grammy's), all the way down on the very bottom residential floor of the Penis Tower. Hell, she's been in Nat and Clint's place a couple of times, and even in _Bruce's_, but never in Steve's.

Which, she is not too scared to admit within the safety of her own head, is because she's a big baby who doesn't want to risk being rejected.

Steve clearly thought that he was being summoned for some sort of global emergency, because when he just about restrains himself from tearing the door off the hinges, leaving Darcy eye-to-nipple with his upsettingly perfect chest, he's naked except for a small white towel. Fully naked, without even his wriststraps or his bands or _anything _to cover any of his Marks.

She looks away, because that's what you do unless you're Thor, and then looks away, because no matter how tiny that towel is or how clearly the name _Steve _is written on the inside of her left wrist, she isn't a pervert. Much.

"I found some stuff that might help your friend," she says, holding out the folder, risking a glance upwards to find him _blushing, _which is ten kinds of adorable. "Sergeant Barnes, I mean. Figured a different approach couldn't hurt, right?"

Steve's smile is really, honestly beautiful, and not just because his teeth are toothpaste ad quality and his cheekbones would make Da Vinci cry. He sort of lights up from inside when he really smiles, all bright baby blues and a sweetness that hits Darcy just under the ribs and holds her breath there.

"Thanks, Darce," he says, and his usual earnestness is turned up so high it hits her like a slap. He catches his towel with one hand, takes the folder with the other, and because she's _not _looking at his chest or stomach or thigh, where it's peeking through the gap in the towel, she sees it. Right there on the inside of his right wrist, plain as day.

_Darcy._

"Holy shit," she says, brain cringing away from her mouth in preparation for what's to come. "I have _got _to tell Jane about this."

Yep, there it is. She can't even look up to see how he reacts, she's so embarrassed.


	2. Nobody knows that you've left for good

_New York, 1941_

The fight Bucky interrupts is the second of the week. Steve never mentioned the first - it was shorter, and more personal, and there's no need to get Buck annoyed over something that ain't going to change. It's not as though Steve is unaware of what he's doing when he picks the fights. He's smarter than most people think, after all, and he knows that he's never going to win, but he can't just sit by and let some blockhead keep bothering a pretty girl when she's made it clear she doesn't want to talk to him, or...

Or let someone make fun of him for wearing two straps.

Steve's always worn two wriststraps - his watch, which was his old man's, on his left wrist, and a plain brown leather strap that Ma wore for work on the right. He's got a Mark on either wrist, and even if one is dead, well, he's going to keep it covered. It's private. It's _his. _The only people who know about Steve's Marks are him, Bucky... That's it, except his doctors, now that Ma is dead. He's already considered weird enough around home without _that _being made a big deal, right?

Steve was born with eight Marks. There are eight people out there somewhere who are tied up in his him in such a special way that their names are written into his skin, and that makes Steve kind of a freak. Most people only have two, _maybe _three Marks, and he's never known anyone else with Marks like his. Most of them - five of the eight - are sort of like scars, pale and blurred and indistinct. He wishes they were clearer, so that even if those people _are_ dead, he'd at least know their names.

The priest at the church where Ma used to go to Mass, he was the one who told them that Steve's Marks are mostly dead. He said that sometimes, people are born and die before they can meet their partners, or maybe they're born before their partners and die before their time. Steve doesn't remember that priest's name, but he does remember his pity, and pity is something Steve's never had much time for. That's pretty much how him and Bucky met, after all - Buck stepped in and fought right along with him, that day in the yard at school, instead of pulling the other guys away. _C'mon, guys, he's only tiny, he couldn't hurt a fly. _None of that crap. Bucky just punched Ricky Harrison in the jaw and introduced himself, and that was that.

(Steve doesn't really know what to say about where his name is on Bucky's body even now. It's hard to know, because Marks usually match, but Bucky's name is tucked against the inside of Steve's left shoulderblade, and Steve's name is written just under the bend of Bucky's left wrist. Still, they get by, and since Steve doesn't know how to talk to girls to look for his _Peggy _and Bucky got beat up the one time he went to Gravesend to look for his _Natalia, _well, maybe they're just as well getting along with each other as well as they do. Steve can't really imagine anything more intimate than the way he draws Bucky, sometimes.)

Bucky looks out for Steve, always has. It's Bucky who patches him up after fights and Bucky who runs out to get his medicine when Steve's not able to go himself, _Bucky Bucky Bucky._

Bucky who's going away to war.

Steve does his best not to be jealous. Honest he does. It's just that Bucky is everything Steve wishes he could be, especially _doing something._ Bucky gets to go to war, Bucky gets to do his part, and Steve has to just... What? Sit back? Watch? Collect scrap in his little red wagon?

It's hard to think about that (harder to think about Bucky not coming home, like Steve's old man, _mustard gas shells bullets gangrene trench foot gone wild_), because if they're bound to one another, shouldn't they be equals? It's so damn unfair, in Steve's opinion, and he thinks that maybe this is how Ma felt when she waved Steve's old man off to war, pregnant and knowing her baby might never see its daddy.

Steve doesn't even know what his father looked like, because he's so much like Ma. Bucky doesn't have a girl or a kid on the way, but he has Becky, and Steve doesn't want to watch Bucky's nephews and nieces grow up knowing about their Uncle Buck but never actually _knowing _him.

Steve doesn't like to think about that, though, so he lets Buck drag him along to the Stark Exposition. Bucky loves this kind of thing - Steve draws him comics with all kinds of wild future crap, making up scientific sounding nonsense to hold up the shiny machines and junk, to make it seem more realistic. Bucky always laughs and bumps his shoulder against Steve's, but he always reads the dumb comics cover to cover, and Steve knows Buck has them all tucked away in a box under his bed.

The expo is nothing at all like Steve's dumb comics.

Everything is silver and shining, and there are sparkling lights everywhere. Bucky looks like it's Christmas, and Steve supposes that for him, it is. This is the last night Bucky has before he ships out, so Steve wants to make the most of it. He wants to make it good, which is why he lets Bucky lead him towards the two girls. The prettier, darker one loops her arm through Bucky's as if it's not their first date, and the other one, with the fairer hair, ignores Steve.

Just like any other night, 'cept for Bucky's uniform.

Him and Buck don't talk about serious stuff. They've never had to, Steve supposes, but sometimes he wishes they could. He wishes he had serious words to explain why it's so important to him that he really do his part. It's partly because Bucky's going and partly because Steve's old man died out there, and a big part of it is because he looks at the newsreels showing the Germans and the Italians and Japs and all he sees are the assholes who beat him up just because he was smaller and couldn't catch his breath right, only bigger, meaner, and a hell of a lot more dangerous.

It's the right thing to do, too. Ma raised Steve to always do the right thing, and he wishes his stupid, fucked-up body wasn't standing in the way. He knows that he could do good, if they'd just give him a damn chance, but they won't. He's got bad lungs and a bad heart and bad eyes and bad hearing and bad everything, and it feels as if Bucky's the only person in the whole world who sees him as anything more than those things, at least since Ma died. Steve wonders, sometimes, if Bucky would've given him the time of day if it hadn't been for their Marks, but he knows Buck, knows that under all the swagger and the laughter there's a heart of gold. Bucky might doubt it, but Steve knows Bucky better than Bucky does, and he knows he's right about this.

Bucky would have noticed him even if Steve's name wasn't written on his wrist. Steve's sure of it.

It's so easy to walk in and sign his name, still feeling the ghost of Bucky's warmth on the back of his neck, Steve thinks. He knows that Bucky thinks he's only going to get himself in trouble doing this, and maybe he's right, but how can he do anything else?

* * *

><p>Doctor Erskine sees something more than just what's wrong with Steve.<p>

That's the start of both the best and worst thing to ever happen to him.


	3. Who's gonna come and save the world?

"My name is Agent Carter," she says, red lipstick and pin curls and the light catching her just right so Steve wants to draw her. That's how he knows - he wanted to draw Bucky, too, the first time he saw him in the schoolyard. That's how he know without asking that her name is Margaret, that her name is _Peggy_, and that's why he doesn't care that he's the only one smiling when she hits the bruiser who makes fun of her accent.

Camp Lehigh is bright and fresh and the air smells empty, but it fills Steve's lungs easier than anything he's ever known so he supposes it's not so bad. The other recruits look at him funny and he gets that, Steve's never gone anywhere but people look at him funny, and the looks only get funnier when they're in the communal showers and they see all his straps, one to cover each of his Marks. One on each wrist, one around each forearm, one on either elbow and two crossbacks, to hide Bucky's name and the blind name inside his other shoulder blade.

Yeah, the looks get _real_ funny then, and Steve kind of gives up on making friends because aside from Bucky and Ma, he's never known anyone to look beyond his Marks. He's used to it, so it doesn't sting, but it _is _kind of lonely, seeing the guys joking around with one another.

He likes Agent Carter, though. _Peggy. _

He stands back and lets the guys try to climb the damn pole, halfway back to camp, and then just about holds back from laughing when he pulls the pin. It seems so obvious that he doesn't get why none of the rest of them did it - why nobody in fifteen damn years thought to do it.

"A smart move, cadet," Agent Carter says, and with her cuffs turned back to combat the humid heat of the day, Steve can see that she's like him, a strap on either wrist, and that's kind of nice. Bucky's one of the few people he's ever know aside from himself to wear two straps, and it makes him hopeful that maybe, just maybe, him and Agent Carter might get along as well as him and Bucky do. "A triumph of brains over brawn, hmm?"

"Ain't got much brawn on my side, ma'am," Steve points out, which makes her smile. She has a beautiful smile, one more thing Steve'd like to draw, and he's glad he can bring it out. "Have to use whatever brains I have, I guess."

"Oh, cheer up, Rogers," she says briskly, but the curve of her grin takes the bite out of her words. "The good doctor wouldn't have insisted on your being here had you appeared an idiot, after all."

She reminds him of Bucky, sometimes - refuses to let him beat himself down, appraises him with a different set of eyes than she does everyone else, understands that just because he maybe can't run as fast as the others doesn't mean he won't find a way to keep up with them.

She runs towards the grenade, too, that day when Doc Erskine and the Colonel are watching them do jumping jacks. Steve knows full well that he's not really making a good show of it - his lungs are burning so hard he can't think, never mind breathe, and every inch of him is aching. Doesn't mean he's not going to run as fast as he can to get on top of the grenade when it skids across the ground.

Doctor Erskine is smiling at him, looking proud. Steve wonders if maybe his old man might've looked at him like that, if he'd lived, because he remembers some of the other kids, he remembers their fathers smiling at them like that when they hit a home run.

Peggy's smiling at him the way he remembers girls smiling at Buck, and that makes him blush.

"Was this a test?" he asks, because he never could control his mouth around a pretty girl.

* * *

><p>"I think this is the longest conversation I've ever had with one," Steve says, wondering why he ever thought it would be easier to talk to a beautiful woman just because she's his <em>Peggy<em>. And okay, sure, he hasn't dared to ask Agent Carter because that would be unprofessional, but he knows in his bones that under one of her straps, his name is right there, on her wrist, clear as a bell.

She smiles that way she does, the same as Bucky does, so he doesn't feel so bad for making an idiot of himself. He tells himself that he's got an excuse, too, because this is his big day. He can still smell Doc Erskine's liquor from last night in the back of his nose, because it was the kind of sharp smell that clears his head, like the smell of antiseptic used to off of Ma's uniform when she came home from work.

The shop is small and dusty, and Steve wonders if maybe there's a back room or something. He doesn't know what to think when Agent Carter talks about holding an umbrella when she's clearly not (he'd have noticed that - he notices everything about Agent Carter).

And then, the doors. And more doors. And a corridor and stairs and there are a lot of people here. One hell of a lot more people than he'd thought there would be here for this business of the Doc's.

Lucky enough, Steve doesn't have a chance to be worried about people watching him like he's a rat in a trap. Instead, the Doc beckons him over and introduces him to Howard Stark.

"Steve, huh?" Stark says, tucking his hands into his pockets and leaning back to look Steve over from head to toe. "You got a _Howard _hanging around your forearms anywhere?"

Steve does, but hell, he saw Howard Stark at the Expo, Buck's last night in New York. He never thought that the _Howard_ on his left forearm could be _this_ Howard.

He hands his left armband to Howard Stark as he strips off to his trousers, which earns him a grin, and nearly jumps out of his skin when Agent Carter takes his watch out of his hand and slips him a wink that would've made _Bucky_ blush.

"Young people," the Doc grumbles, shooing them into their correct places, which makes Steve laugh - he can't help it, he feels completely relaxed now, even if it's just for a minute. He doesn't know Howard Stark at all and he only just knows Agent _Peggy _Carter, but it's nice to know they're present. It's nice to know that even if Bucky can't be here for this, people who could in time come to mean as much to him as Bucky does can.

"Interesting, these Marks," the Doc says, tracing the blurred Marks on Steve's right arm as he straps him into the machine. "Remind me to look at them next week."

"Not later today?"

The Doc huffs at him, looks at him over his glasses.

"I will be breaking open a new bottle of schnapps tonight," he says, which makes Steve laugh a little again, just a gasp and a smile, but it's enough. "Next week, you and I will talk about these Marks of yours."

Steve jumps a little at the sting of the needle slipping under his skin, but it's not so bad. He says as much to the Doc, who just smiles a little and assures him that _that _was only penicillin.

* * *

><p>It hurts. <em>God<em> it hurts, but the look on Peggy's and Howard's and the Doc's faces make up for that.

Seeing the light fade from the Doc's eyes hurts more than any procedure ever could, anyway.


End file.
